A very technical explanation on how to fast on this 5 days, very interesting, but also very complicated for one who has a complicated mind.
Answer
It’s not necessary that we follow all of that. The spiritual master we’ll tell us what to follow and what not follow.
But it’s necessary to publish those (and other) information.
In the past we had serious concern about what we said and how much we said.
About the first, one reason was that non-devotees or too neophite devotee would misunderstand and take it in the wrong way. Like for instance speaking about intimate pastimes. If someone is not even just a little advanced instead to being inspired would become envious of Krishna and try to imitate him.
Of course we find a lot of intimate pastimes in Srila Prabhupada’s books and also times are changed. Nowadays everyone can find anything, even very intimate books like the Gita Govinda freely on the Internet.
So I feel better we ourselves tell some of those stories putting some philosophy in, like Srila Prabhupada did with Krishna Book and making ourselves available to answer questions.
About how much we said, just lately a devotee told that she felt discouraged because she thought that will never be able to understand or to teach such profound philosophy. I explained that it’s not expected that everyone become a philosopher but that everyone becomes a devotee. A pure-hearted devotees cleaning the temple floor is no doubt dearer to Krishna than an big arrogant so-called intelligent philosopher.
The point is that sometimes we have to give people the perspective of how incredibly elevated and beautiful is Vedic Vaisnava culture. We can’t hide it for fear that someone may become discouraged. Again, it is not expected that everyone be able to speak about (for instance) Nyaya, or the Vedanta-sutras, or explain the creation of the universe. It takes a natural talent to delve into such matters.
But chanting Hare Krishna, everyone can do it, become happy and go back to Krishna in this very lifetime.
Manonatha Dasa (ACBSP)
20 nov 2019
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